


Meet the Parents

by Yavannie



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Elements of Plot, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Jealousy, Loud Sex, Smut, Trading Favors, smut with plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie
Summary: Sweet Pea is angry with Archie, and Veronica is angry with Hiram Lodge. Fortunately, there's one stone for both of these birds.





	Meet the Parents

**Author's Note:**

> This ship hit me like a truck, much thanks to increasingly intense ranting with Nimmieamme, and [rainystripe's art on tumblr](http://rainystripe.tumblr.com/post/168783376085/smol-bonus-after).
> 
> HUGE thanks to [Nimmieamme](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee) for beta reading this. I cannot rightly express how much she improved it, and I'm forever in her debt. Also, her portrayal of Veronica and Sweet Pea in her astounding epic [Night Zombies, Neighbors](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12847146/chapters/29336709) is a huge influence on this, and you should all read it now.
> 
> Special thanks to [Raptorlily](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Raptorlily/pseuds/Raptorlily) for assisting me with the best nickname for Veronica :D

“I know what you’re doing,” says Veronica quietly, bending her head back a little so that he can hear her.

She’s sitting on his lap, because there’s no chairs left, no space on the couch, and because he offered. But she’s small, her feet dangling off the ground, and she keeps slipping down, so Sweet Pea has his arm casually wrapped around her waist, keeping her in place so she can chat with Betty in the next seat along. Because she fits so well there, and because why the hell not, he’s been letting his fingers sweep distractedly over her hip, feeling that silky, expensive fabric hugging her shape.

“Hmm?” he says.

It could mean ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’, or ‘I can’t hear you over this shitty house music’, or ‘I wasn’t paying attention to what you were saying’. But Veronica isn’t buying any of it.

“I  _know_ ,” she says, twisting around to look him the eye, and then pointedly looking across the room to where a certain redheaded asshole is leaning up against a door frame.

In the four weeks that have passed since Southside High shut down, Archie Andrews has made it his mission in life to piss Sweet Pea off as much as humanly possible. In all honesty, they should have just finished what they started in the streets, immediately. In fact, he told him so, offering the obnoxious jerk a fight, fair and square, and if he’d been able to give Archie a proper beatdown, that might have settled things. Instead, Archie put on his goody-two shoes, meeting Sweet Pea and the others with an infuriating mix of holier-than-thou attitude and barely concealed contempt.

“Let’s not make things worse by fighting,” he’d said on the first day of school.

He’d said it as if  _they_ were the ones making it worse, were the ones who’d done the  _thing_ to begin with. And Sweet Pea had to make do with a one-on-one against the jock with the pretty face, Reggie Mantle, a solidly unpleasant snob with zero illusions about being the bigger man in any way except with his fists. It had been a good one, and they’d been cool ever since.

With Archie, things had definitely gotten worse. Archie preached, but he did not practice. He’d sweeten his talk with stuff like “making the best of a bad situation”, or “it’ll get better once you settle in properly”, but whenever he could do it without being noticed, he’d throw Sweet Pea a look so dirty it practically attracted flies. Whenever Jughead was around, however, he’d make a point of being the perfect gentleman, because of course he did.

“If we’re going to share a school for two years, we might as well put our differences aside,” Archie said loudly one lunch break, as if he hadn’t been the one literally stomping into the Southside, tagging the bodega and waving a gun around. As if he hadn’t been the one meddling in a time-honored tradition by calling the cops on the Ghoulies, making the Serpents look like double-crossing squealers.

“Someone’s vandalized the drinking fountain in the boys' locker room, did you know?” Archie went on, turned to Betty and Veronica. “I mean, I get that they’re angry about their school closing, but tearing up ours isn’t going to make things any better.”

As a matter of fact, Sweet Pea had been in the locker room when it happened. That Chuck Clayton had tried to tackle a Ghoulie, the Ghoulie had ducked aside, and Chuck had crashed into the fountain, ripping it off the wall.

“I’d much rather you put your money where your mouth is and stop blaming a Southsider every time someone so much as farts,” Sweet Pea said, bunching his fist up. He felt like punching the table. He felt like punching  _Archie_. But he didn’t particularly feel like detention, so he let it slide.

The silver lining to all this was that Archie Andrews seemed utterly alone in his fake-ass crusade for camaraderie. Everyone else waged war at breaktime and partied together on the weekend, like normal goddamn people.

Parties on the Northside were not all that different from the ones on the Southside. More expensive stuff in the liquor cabinets, more worrying about upholstery, and swimming pools certainly were more numerous. Otherwise, it was all about making out in someone’s parents’ bed, being sick in the tub and talking loudly in the kitchen.

Or, as it were, perching Veronica Lodge on your knee in the hopes of pissing off her ex.

“I’ll stop if you want,” he says.

She seems to think about it. “No,” she says finally. “But you owe me one.”

And with that, she slides her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth.

This is an unexpected bonus, he thinks, smiling against her before parting his lips to let her slide her tongue in to brush over his. It's small and warm and insistent, just like her. He makes a point of never even looking at Archie Andrews, instead relishing the way she shifts in his lap, her ass rubbing delightfully over his thighs, until Fangs elbows him in the side.

“You guys can stop now, he’s gone.”

Veronica kisses him again for good measure, then pokes him on the nose and says “boop” before turning back to Betty, who’s sitting with a chip halfway to her open mouth and a large splat of dip on her jeans, staring at them.

“Dude, what the fuck,” Fangs chuckles, shaking his head.

But it doesn’t really come out of nowhere.

Inexplicably, when Veronica picked a side, she didn’t pick Archie’s. Maybe even the very opposite of his side. That is to say, she was perhaps the real true neutral, when he was only playing at being one. Veronica took no shit from Serpents. She took no shit from Ghoulies, either. A small, halfmoon-shaped wound on the foot of Dominic Deadhead could attest to that. But she also let no shit flung at a Southsider go by unremarked. Sweet Pea’s not sure, but he suspects the breakup (the second breakup, according to Jughead, who really shouldn’t get on a high horse in this particular case), coming only days after the merge, was partially due to her and Archie’s diverging opinion on the school nearly doubling its population.

On the second day, in the breakroom, when Betty had left to speak privately with Jughead, Veronica had remained behind, listening and watching politely, probably trying hard not to feel like a walking, talking Tiffany’s ad in a Hot Topic store. Archie had come in, spotted her and dragged her up and away by the hand.

“I don’t want you sitting alone with them,” he’d said, loud enough for Toni to throw Sweet Pea a warning glance.

He didn’t hear her reply, only that it was angry, snappy, and when she left the room, it wasn’t in Archie’s company.

A week later, Archie had to sullenly look on as she sat wherever she pleased, even when it apparently pleased her to squeeze herself down in the not-quite-space between Sweet Pea and Betty, her arm resting lightly on his knee while she showed Betty something on her phone.

The week after that, she had complained so loudly about Reggie Mantle putting her books on top of the lockers, where she couldn’t get at them, that he had lifted her by the waist until she could reach them. She complained even more loudly about that, telling him in no uncertain terms that one did not simply pick Veronica Lodge up unannounced. Not ten minutes later, Reggie (or so she claimed) had done it again, and this time she promptly demanded Sweet Pea leave his lunch tray to come and haul her up there.

“This is degrading,” he’d told her. “Interrupting my lunch, forcing me into unpaid labor or whatever. But I expect that’s standard for a Lodge.”

“Higher,” she ordered. “And no looking up my skirt.”

He hadn’t even thought about that until she mentioned it, so now of course he was looking.

And so it went on. Veronica kept somehow finding excuses to use his height to her advantage, and he kept finding excuses to look. The biggest and best excuse was, of course, that it drove Archie to distraction.

Tonight, it has even driven him out of the room, which is both satisfying and slightly disappointing. The makeout session may have been a bonus, but it was one he had hoped wouldn’t end so soon.

“Hey, Tinkerbell,” he says, poking her in the back. “What exactly do I owe you?”

She turns back around, looking at him thoughtfully. “What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

“Uh, let’s see, I’m going to this party,” he begins sarcastically, and she rolls her eyes.

“ _Later_ tonight. And tomorrow morning.”

“Why?”

She gets up and motions at him to follow her into the kitchen. Once away from the din of the party, she explains.

“It’s a simple concept,” she assures him. “All you have to do is follow me home, sneak in a guest room and then waltz out the next morning while daddy’s reading the paper, pretending you’re my wildly inappropriate date slash one night stand slash whatever.”

“Again, why?”

“Because it’ll be  _fun_ ,” she says, grabbing at his jacket and giving it a little shake, like it’ll be hilarious to her and extremely not hilarious to her father.

“You just want to piss him off, don’t you?”

“Ex _ac_ tly,” she says, prodding him in the chest for emphasis. “Like you with Archie.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure two and a half minutes of making out on a couch is equivalent to spending an entire night in the mansion of some crooked Carlos Slim.”

“It’s not a mansion. It’s a luxury apartment. And you shouldn’t diss the guest beds before you try them.”

“We’re talking  _hours_.”

She purses her lips and sighs, like she knows it’s kind of an unreasonable request. “I’d offer you money,” she says, looking at him from under those dark, thick lashes. “If it didn’t sound like the actual plot of a genderbent  _Pretty Woman_.”

“I haven’t seen  _Pretty Woman_ ,” he says bluntly. “But I’ll take the cash.”

“How much?” she asks.

“How much do you think I’m worth?” he says with a lopsided smile.

“That’s unfair,” she says. “We both know you’re priceless. How about a hundred?”

Unaffected by her poor attempts at flattery, he glances at the clock on the wall. “For what, eight hours? That’s not even minimum wage.”

“A hundred and fifty,” she says impatiently.

“Two hundred.”

“Deal.”

And so he finds himself with Veronica Lodge behind him on the bike, roaring through the empty streets of the Northside. She guides him around the back of the Pembrooke, where he parks the bike behind a dumpster.

“My parents are still out,” she says. “They’re at the opera, watching  _La Bohème_ , and we’ve probably got half an hour before they get back. I have to get rid of Andre though.”

She orders him to wait around the corner from the entrance, and a couple of minutes later he can hear her wailing in distress.

“He followed me all the way from Pickens Park, Andre! I can’t be sure but I think he had a black hood. What if there’s another killer on the loose? You have to do something, now!”

“Maybe we should call the police, Miss Lodge,” comes the voice of an unknown man. It’s a tired voice, like the man speaking knows that reasoning with Veronica is pointless.

“That is a cowardly thing to say, Andre,” Veronica says sternly. “Whatever would daddy think? That you’re too scared to protect the crown jewel of his family? We hired you for a reason! You’re trained in the martial arts! Now I’m telling you this man headed towards the school, and I want you to follow him!”

The man heaves a sigh. “Yes, Miss Lodge.”

Sweet Pea can’t help but snicker at her when she comes back to fetch him.

“Crown jewel?” he says.

“You’re looking at it,” she says, completely straight-faced, glancing around at the street before walking ahead of him to the front of the building.

Everything inside the entry hall gleams, with brass and marble and mahogany, and he feels so out of place his skin is practically crawling. Then he squares his shoulders. He’s not about to let some  _building_ get the better of him. Especially not a building owned by the guy who tore the Twilight to the ground. No, fuck that guy, he tells himself, as Veronica unlocks a door leading into one of the apartments.

“Don’t bother taking your shoes off,” she says, dropping her keys in her purse in a businesslike manner and putting it on a side table. “Come on.”

He trails at her heels, taking in the overblown entrance, the stone slabs that give way to expensive-looking floorboards, the gilded mirror, the off white walls, hung with what he assumes counts as tasteful art. She leads him into the kitchen, where she goes to the window, peering down at the street. Meanwhile, Sweet Pea drifts over to the fridge, opens it and looks inside.

“Help yourself to whatever you like,” says Veronica without turning around. “And get the champagne out.”

The fridge doesn’t seem to hold anything that’s actually edible. There’s just endless tiny bottles and jars. Sauces, chili peppers in individual glass vials, spreads, soft cheeses, fancy looking jam, some kind of paté, and various types of alcohol. He finds a bottle that says  _Champagne, Salon, Blanc de Blancs_ , hauls it out and puts it on the counter. Further down in the fridge, there’s a bowl of stuffed olives, covered with cling wrap, and he goes about eating them while he looks for something better. Finally, underneath a frosted glass food cover, he hits the jackpot; a half-eaten triple-layer chocolate cake.

“I’ll have some of that, too,” says Veronica, who’s now standing next to him, struggling with the champagne cork.

“Here,” says Sweet Pea, putting the cake down and grabbing the bottle.

He doesn’t know if he’s ever had champagne before, but how different can it really be from Prosecco, he thinks as he aims the bottle away, giving the cork a good push with his thumbs. With a loud pop, the cork shoots off, hits a lamp and ricochets off to knock a vase off a piedestal. The vase smashes into pieces as it hits the floor.

“Whoops,” he says, glancing at Veronica.

“It’ll give Andre something to worry about once he gets back,” she says, waving it off.

She cuts them a big slice each of the cake, and they eat it with their hands right off the tray, washing it down with champagne.

“‘s pretty good,” he says with a grin, raising his glass, smearing it with frosting.

Veronica grins back, stuffing a piece of cake in her mouth, getting some fudge sauce on her cheek in the process.

“Wait,” says Sweet Pea. “You’ve got some…” he motions to his own face.

“Mm,” Veronica manages, holding a hand up and chewing for a few seconds. “Here?” she asks, swiping the back of her hand across the smudge.

“You’re making it worse,” he says. “Let me do it.”

His pinky finger is still reasonably clean, so he uses it to wipe away the chocolate, then holds it out to show her. She glances at it, then grabs his hand. Very deliberately, she puts his finger in her mouth, slowly swirling her tongue around it, sucking it clean, all while looking him straight in the eye. The sensation goes straight to his cock, makes his blood surge, his breath catch a little.

“Goddamn,” he says in a low voice.

She raises an eyebrow, gives his finger a final, torturous flick with her tongue before letting his hand go and grabbing her drink again.

“Let’s finish these in the study,” she says, walking off, her heels clicking rapidly across the floor.

He follows her down what seems like an endless corridor with closed doors on either side. Then they turn right and into a grandiose living room, complete with a chandelier and a fireplace. At the other end of it, the way into Hiram Lodge’s office is barred by a pair of massive double doors.

“Can you pick the lock?” asks Veronica.

“What kind of a question is that?” he snorts. “That's some socio-economic profiling shit right there.”

“Jughead is rubbing off on you,” she notes. “So, can you?”

“Why are you breaking into a room in your own house?”

“To steal something, of course,” says Veronica.

“What?”

She hesitates for a brief moment. “Money,” she says decisively. “To pay you. Among other things.”

“So let me get this clear. You’re asking me to break into your dad’s study, so you can steal your parents’ money and then pay me with it.”  
  
“I’m an only child, Sweet Pea,” she says evenly. “Theoretically it  _could_ already be my money.”

“Theoretically?”

“They could be lying dead in a ditch,” she shrugs.

“Damn, Elsa, that’s cold,” says Sweet Pea and hands her his glass. He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, flips it open and chooses a couple of his Bogota picks.

“Tools and everything,” Veronica tuts as he kneels down and sets to work on the lock.

“You still shouldn’t assume.”

The lock is a simple one, and it soon clicks, letting him swing the doors open.

“After you, your majesty,” he says.

“Highness,” she says, striding inside.

“I’m sorry, what?”

The desk in the office is predictably huge. Veronica walks up to it, pulls open a drawer and starts rifling through it.

“Only the  _de facto_ ruler of a kingdom is ever called ‘majesty’,” she says. “I am at best  _la princesa_ here at the Pembrooke, so. Her royal highness will do.”

“Are you serious?”

She throws him a withering look, then pulls what looks like a bag for toiletries from the drawer and puts it on the desk.

“Big bills? Small?” she asks, zipping it open.

“Tens will do.”

Sweet Pea sips his champagne and looks around the study while he waits. There’s a big portrait of Veronica hanging behind the desk, and for a split second he’s amused by the thought of this Veronica, high and mighty up on her wall, looking down sternly at her smaller, darker twin, currently counting out her father’s money to give away to a Serpent.

“Two hundred, as agreed,” she says, holding out a small stack of bills.

“Won’t he notice?” he asks, folding the money and pocketing it in his jacket.

“Mom steals money from here all the time,” says Veronica. She leaves a considerably larger pile for herself on the desk before returning the bag to the drawer. “And he knows. And she knows he knows. So daddy will just think it’s her and refill the stash when it runs low.”

“What a fucking family,” he mutters, then saunters over to the window, peeking through the blinds.

Behind him, he can hear Veronica rummaging around for something else, but his focus is on the car in the street outside that’s now pulling up in front of the house.

“I think your parents are back,” he says.

“Just a second.”

He turns around, and is met by the sight of her leaning on her elbows on the desk, taking pictures of some documents with her phone. No doubt the papers are filled with all kinds of juicy, intricate secrets, of dirty deals and even dirtier dollars, but his eyes are drawn inevitably to her petite, round behind, angled enticingly towards him. He places a hand on the small of her back, lightly drumming his fingers across her hip. She doesn’t seem to mind, so he sweeps them over her ass, grasping it briefly. At that, she shakes him off.

“Not here,” she says, but he can hear her smile. “All done, let’s go.”

While she hurriedly puts the papers back in the desk, he picks up their glasses and looks around for anything else they might have left behind. Then they slip out, and in the hallway they can hear the sounds of voices approaching, a man and a woman talking.

“Drat,” Veronica hisses.

She grabs him by the hand, dragging him around a corner and through a door. Once inside, she locks the door and leans against it, heaving a sigh of relief.

“Close call,” says Sweet Pea and chuckles, and then she’s laughing too, pulling her heels off and sliding down to sit with her back against the door.

They’re in her room. He knows, from giving it the briefest of glances. It’s still grand and pale, but it’s cozier than the other rooms. The bed is huge and high, and very inviting.

“What now?” he asks, sitting down next to her. “I wait for them to go to bed and then sneak out?”

She frowns at him. “No. The whole point of this is that they’ll realize you’re here. With me.”

“Mm, about that.” He gets to his feet again, crossing to the window. It looks down onto a garden, spacious and well-lit, ringed by a high wall. It seems easy enough to get down there, but he doesn’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. More backyards belonging to rich people, he assumes. “Your dad keep a gun in the house?”

“Probably,” says Veronica. “Why?”

“Because the risk of him using it against me when he finds me in your bedroom feels pretty substantial.”

She gives him an unimpressed look. “Daddy is not going to shoot you. Heaven knows he probably wanted to kill Archie on multiple occasions, but he’s not a  _complete_ monster.”

“Archie’s no Serpent,” Sweet Pea points out.

“Getting cold feet?” Veronica asks, walking up to him. She steps close and slides her hand under his jacket. Then she tugs lightly at the folded up bills in his breast pocket. “Because I can totally take these back.”

But he’s not doing it for the money. He’s doing it because she’s sweet, and fierce, because they’ve been playing at this silly tug-of-war for weeks now. Because he likes a challenge as much as the next guy.

“You can take those if I take the bed,” says Sweet Pea.

She’s got both hands under his jacket now, running them over his chest. With a very serious look in her eyes she says, “That bed is big enough for the both of us.”

It’s almost ridiculous how far he has to bend down to kiss her, even when she’s on her tiptoes, so he grabs her thighs and hoists her up instead. With a surprised gasp, she bites down on his lip, just hard enough to draw some blood.

“Ouch,” he says.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“You'll just have to kiss it better.”

And her kisses are like her, sweet and fierce, as he carries her to the bed and lays her down. His hands sink down into the soft bedding as he drags his teeth along her jawline, nipping lightly at her throat and then soothing it with his tongue.

“This wasn't part of the deal,” she says, her voice a little thick. Her hand is fumbling at the front of his jeans now, pawing at his belt. “But I don’t mind mixing business with pleasure, how about you?”

“Does it seem like I mind?” he says, grabbing her hand and moving it down to his hard-on.

There’s no doubt she knows how to drive a guy nuts, he thinks as she traces his cock through his jeans. But if he’s smart about it, he can keep reaping the rewards of this night in the weeks to come. Lingering looks across the classroom, amped-up flirting in the queue for lunch, seeing her roll her hips at cheer practice, just for him. All of it would be rubbing the coarsest of salts in the break-up wounds of Archie Andrews. If he’s smart. If he makes it a night to remember.

“Move up,” he says, while slipping his hands under the hem of her dress.

She scoots backwards, a surprised smile on her lips that grows wider as he pulls her tights and panties down as she goes.

“No shoes on the bed,” she says quickly when he moves to kneel on it.

He snorts, but stands up to kick off his boots. “Here lies the mood,” he says, shrugging out of his jacket while he’s at it, “killed by her royal highness, Veronica Lodge.”

“I trust we’ll bring it back.”

She claps her hands three times in rapid succession, and the lamps suddenly start dimming. Then she claps once more, and the fading stops, leaving the lights pleasantly low.

“Fancy,” he says, settling between her legs and pushing her dress up over her hips.

She’s shaved down there, or waxed, or something, but she’s kept a patch of black at the top, shaped like a heart, or perhaps an arrow, pointing the way. It looks exclusive, somehow, and he suspects she gets it done by a professional. He’s gone down on girls before, and guys too, for that matter, but the stakes seem higher than usual now. Maybe he ought to ask her what she likes, he thinks as he kisses the cropped hair briefly to give her some warning before he dips his tongue between her folds.

She lets him know in her own way. Moving against his face, pushing him around, tugging at his hair, and above all, making enough noise to raise the dead. Short, stuttered yelps, drawn-out moans and swearing so loud he keeps glancing aside at the door, expecting Hiram Lodge to come barging in any minute, shotgun in hand. And then he realizes, it’s all part of the plan. She  _wants_ them to hear.  _Freaky_ , he thinks briefly, and finds that he’s fine with this. He wets a finger quickly in his mouth, then uses it to fuck her while he sucks at her clit. For a few seconds she goes quiet apart from her uneven, ragged breaths, and when she starts moaning again, it sounds more earnest. From then on, he pays special attention to what makes her forget she’s supposed to be making noises, until finally, she stops breathing altogether. Then her thighs tense, and she comes with a brief cry, squirming away from him, rolling over on her side.

Sweet Pea sits back on his heel and wipes his chin on his t-shirt, admiring his work. Veronica’s dress is still bunched around her waist, her hair clips have slipped, and her lipstick is mostly kissed away. She looks disheveled, almost dazed, and when her eyes meet his, she turns away quickly with an embarrassed smile, tugging her dress down a little.  _Your pretty boy Andrews never did this to you?_ he wonders.

“That was… something,” she says, practically answering his question without knowing it.

“That was a start,” he says.

He lets her undress him, and she sets about this task like she seems to do with everything in life; with determination, and passion. She starts with the t-shirt, tugging eagerly at it until he raises his arms to let her slip it over his head. Once it’s been tossed aside, she takes a moment to run her hands over his chest, to trace a scar on his ribs with her fingers. Then she unbuckles his belt and yanks open his button fly as if it were a present on Christmas morning.

When Veronica takes his cock in her mouth he has to look away, flopping back on the bed and staring at the ceiling. It’s very high, he thinks. More than ten feet, easily. She does the same thing to him now as she did with his pinky finger in the kitchen, he’s already as hard as he’ll ever get from feeling her come around his fingers, and the only thing keeping him from blowing his load is trying to work out exactly how far away that ceiling is. Twelve and a half feet, he decides. Then she raises her head, and he draws a shuddering breath of relief.

“Drawer,” she says, nodding at the bedside table.

He finds condoms there, and tosses her one. As she unwraps it and rolls it on, he keeps breathing, looking at the walls, the lights, the wardrobe, until she pulls her dress over her head. He couldn't look away from that even if he tried, he thinks while he kicks his jeans all the way down and off. Then she straddles him, slowly sinking onto his cock, and it’s everything, all at once. Her hair, loose over her shoulders, her breasts, small and round and perfect, and  _her_ , soft and hot around him. She looks like a dream and feels even better.

When she leans forward and starts moving, he winces quietly. He wishes he wasn't so damn horny, that he could do more than lie there like some glorified dildo while she rocks over him, rubbing her clit against his pelvis. He fumbles briefly for her ass, then her breasts, before resigning to holding onto her shoulders, gripping them tightly and trying to make his mind go blank until she cries out again, trembling against him.

She sinks down on his chest, breathing hard. Still inside her, Sweet Pea is painfully close. All it would take is a couple of strokes he thinks, chewing the inside of his cheek and tipping his head back to stare at the headboard. Then a thought hits him.

“Can you do one more?” he asks.

“I honestly don’t know,” she mumbles.

“Get on your knees, I have an idea.”

He shuffles out from under her, and once she’s facing the wall, he slides inside her from behind. With the last ounces of willpower left in him, Sweet Pea fucks her with one hand against the headboard, and each time his hips meet her ass, the bed rocks into the wall with a loud thud.

“Genius,” Veronica groans, before commencing her moaning again.

He doesn't last very long, and the relief when he shudders inside her is so intense that he can barely stay on his knees. Spots dance before his eyes as he holds on to the bed long enough for her to finish herself off, and then they collapse on the bed, exhausted.

“Think they heard us?” he asks once he’s caught his breath.

“I think they probably  _felt_ us,” says Veronica, propping herself up on her elbow. She reaches up for this hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “Thank you,” she says then, softly, pressing a kiss against his lips.

“Anytime.”

He means it more than he lets on. Like Jughead told him, grabbing his sleeve as they were leaving the party, this is a bad idea. But he's acted on bad ideas his whole life, and mostly, it's turned out alright. Once they've cleaned up and slipped under the covers, he pulls her close, and her lithe shape fits snugly against him, feels right, somehow. It's almost unsettling. He should detest Veronica, and maybe he detests the idea of her, of what and who she is. But Veronica herself? He can't even pretend to mildly dislike her anymore. She fumbles for his hand, pulls it over her chest and gets comfortable. It doesn't take long before she's snoring softly, still holding his hand between hers.

He's not going to sleep tonight, he tells himself. He can sleep tomorrow, in his own room, far away from butlers who know martial arts and Hiram Lodge’s potential shotgun. Maybe he'll even wait for a bit and then sneak out. He can absolutely stay awake. Totally.

 

* * *

 

He awakes the next morning to the sound of someone pounding on the door.

“Ronnie, time to get up!” comes a woman's voice from outside. “The Dinesens decided to come over for an unannounced business brunch and they'll be here in a few minutes.”

“Coming,” Veronica calls back, sitting up sleepily, blinking in the morning sun.

But then the lock rattles, and she throws Sweet Pea a bewildered look.

“I said I'm coming!” she yells.

Her mother goes on, “I know you're in there with Archie, but he needs to leave before–"

The door swings open and Hermione Lodge falls silent, staring at Sweet Pea, then at Veronica, then at the Serpent jacket on the floor, and then back to Sweet Pea.

“ _Dios mio_ ,” she mumbles before turning around to walk down the hallway, shouting, “Hiram!”

“What now?” says Sweet Pea to Veronica.

“Go, go, go!” she hisses, pushing him off the bed with surprising strength.

He scrambles into his clothes, nearly tripping over as he tries to pull his jeans on.

“Which way?” he asks, but then he hears approaching steps outside, and decides to take his chances with the window.

Luckily, Hiram Lodge has not brought any guns this time, and perhaps just as luckily, he seems reluctant to get his suit dirty, because he settles for leaning from Veronica's window, shouting threats of a swift death should Sweet Pea ever decide to set foot in the house again. Meanwhile, Sweet Pea hauls himself up and over the garden wall. Another couple of backyards away, he finds a narrow alley leading him to the back street with the dumpster, and he wastes no time in getting on his bike and speeding off towards the Southside.

 

* * *

 

It takes until Wednesday and another public makeout session, this time at Pop’s, before Archie Andrews fully cottons on. On the Thursday, he walks up to the Serpents’ table at lunch, resolute and grim in his letterman jacket.

“You want a fight?” he says. “You got your fight. You and me. After final period. Neutral ground.”

“There is no such thing as neutral ground,” snorts Sweet Pea.

“Outside the city limits,” says Archie. “The road to Greendale. Just you and me. No weapons. No friends.” He glares at Fangs and Toni.

Sweet Pea picks an apple from his tray and takes a big bite, chewing it thoughtfully. “You know what, I think I'll pass,” he says.

“ _What_?”

“You're right, Andrews. Things  _are_ better now that I've settled in properly. The Northside has its  _perks_ , I can see that now. So let's not make things worse by fighting, right?”

Archie stares at him for several seconds, shoulders sinking slowly. In the end, he just turns and walks away without another word.

“A shame,” says Fangs wistfully. “You could have knocked a few teeth out and he wouldn't even have been able to complain about it.”

“There's always tomorrow,” says Sweet Pea. Then he spots Veronica in the line for lunch, and his face breaks into a grin. “Besides, I've already got a date tonight.”


End file.
